This has been true for years now, so I expect it will continue to be true in the near future. Every January sees a surge in ebook sales and it’s down to one thing. Presents!

People get new devices for Hanukkah and Christmas, or just because there are good deals and they want to treat themselves. And by “devices”, I mean all sorts of things. They might be Kindles, they might be other ereaders, but they also might be tablets, from Kindle Fire to Galaxy to iPads. They can even be phones. Someone getting a smartphone for the first time might want to check out this whole “reading ebooks on a phone” thing.

Librarians know this, because there’s always a flood of new people trying out Overdrive or other ebook lending platforms. More books get checked out; hold queues get longer; and there are more phone calls to the library asking how to use this whole ereader/ebook thing.

But how can you, an ebook author, cash in on this spike?

Be poised and ready!

That doesn’t mean slapping a book together in December. Because, if you’re anything like me, December’s already full of shopping and traveling and wrapping and baking and family and who knows what. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll get anything much accomplished in December. Unless you already have a proven track record of being able to pull it off.

Then, when it’s finished, don’t hesitate to put it up for sale. To be best poised for those January sales, you’ll ideally have:

* Lots of 4 and 5 star ratings. * A print version for sale.

Neither of these things can happen very quickly. Fortunately the reviews and ratings ARE something you can work on in December. Set a free promotion in December and publicize the heck out of it. Offer review copies to reviewers. Nag your family and friends. These things take time in aggregate, but it’s something you can do in the spare moments between trips to the store for more Scotch tape and eggnog.

In short: Plan ahead. No one at all can buy your book in January if you never managed to get it up for sale by January.

2 Ways to the Slightly Cryptic Short Link (amzn.com/B00C7C6702)

Way #1

On every product page on Amazon, there will be a little share widget. I have seen this appear in a couple of different locations, but look for it somewhere above the customer reviews. It may be in the sidebar on the right under the various ‘buy it now!’ buttons. It will say ‘Share’ with 4 different icons – Email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.

Click on ‘Share’ or the Email icon. A window should pop up prompting you to share it. Look for where it says ‘Link’. There’s your link! Just copy it and then you can close that pop up.

Paste and share that link wherever you want!

Way #2

The secret about that link is that the B00C7C6702 part after the slash? That’s your ASIN. Your unique Amazon product number. So if you know that, you can just substitute that in.

It’s listed in Product Details on your book’s Amazon page.

Use whichever of those two ways seems easiest to you.

The Way to the Prettier, More Memorable Short Link (amzn.to/geekytrivia1)

The amzn.to short urls are coming from a service called bit.ly.

Step 1: Sign up for an account at http://bit.ly. It’s a quick registration, free, and it doesn’t even require an Email verification.

Step 2: Look for the happy pufferfish in the upper right corner, imploring you to paste your URL.

Step 3: What URL do you want to paste? You can paste the really long Amazon URL, the short amzn.com URL, or even a URL that has your Amazon Associates affiliate link in it. Choose whichever one you want and paste it near the pufferfish.

Step 4: It’s created a short link for you! It will probably say amzn.to/(random#). You can use that, but the point was to make it pretty!

Step 5: There’s a little pencil icon indicating you can edit the URL. Go ahead and do that. These shorturls are shared throughout the bit.ly network, however. That means you probably can’t get something like amzn.to/myebook, because it’s likely already taken. Choose something short, memorable, related to your book, but unique.

Step 6: This is a tricky bit that confused me at first. After you’ve edited it, it shows it as a bit.ly address, not an amzn.to one. But actually, they’ll both work. bit.ly/geekytrivia1 and amzn.to/geekytrivia1 both go to the same location.

BONUS! This bit.ly / amzn.to method will work for your Amazon author page as well.

Short URLs! Useful for more than just Twitter! Share them with all your friends, followers, and fans!

I signed up for the Absolute Write forums – http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/. I had been a longtime lurker under another user name, but this time I dove right in. It’s really a great resource for finding current information about writing, publishing, marketing and all of that. If someone there doesn’t have the answer to your question, they’ll at least have some strong opinions about it. They have subforums for all genres and one specifically for self-publishing and another for promotion, so I definitely encourage you to check it out. I had to be manually approved to start posting and to edit my profile, but I was approved in less than a day.

And the reason I bring up these forums now is that the postings in there led me directly to the Goodreads Making Connections group. Before, I was sort of vaguely aware you could offer your book to reviewers on LibraryThing and Goodreads, but I hadn’t really looked into the logistics. Turns out the Making Connections group is actually a pretty easy and friendly way to go about it.

The reviews are not specifically Goodreads reviews, but also Amazon and other sites as well.

How to Get Your Book Into Goodreads Reviewers’ Hands

Step 1.Get a Goodreads account. Or get another one, if you already had one under a different name from the pen name on your current book.

Step 3. Claim your book. This is pretty easy and fast, except.. that I ran into a snag. I wrote the Flaming Geeks author bio in the plural, so they rejected it as an author, because it was an organization. So.. the account still exists, but it’s not an author account and it can’t claim its book. I expect to have better luck with Juliet Rich!

Step 4. Find the Making Connections group. That link should work, but if it doesn’t, just go to Groups and then search for “Making Connections”.

Step 9. They’ll start a thread for you. Monitor that thread daily so you can send out the requested copies.

Step 10.Profit. Reviews. Yay, reviews!

Does It Work?

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know! I’m starting off with 1 review on my trivia book, so even 1 additional review would be double my count.

Shout-Outs

Thanks to pretty much everyone who participates on the Absolute Write forums, and particularly the administrators and moderators. And thanks to the people running the Making Connections group on Goodreads and the reviewers who are eager to review. There’s lots of great people out there in the book world.

I had a post all ready to go about a certain program, but if I read the legal language correctly, I’m not allowed to post something like that. Am I even allowed to quote the part of the agreement that says I’m not supposed to post about the agreement? I don’t think so..

I am allowed, and required, to post this: “JulietRich.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://www.amazon.com.”

So expect that to appear somewhere (else) on the website as soon as I decide where I want to put it.

Share the post “How to Add a Custom 404 Page in WordPress Using Atahualpa”

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What is a 404 Page and Why Do I Want a Custom One?

A 404 page is the page that’s displayed when someone tries to access a page on your site that doesn’t exist. Maybe it once did and doesn’t now. Maybe it moved. Maybe it never existed. Whatever the case, the visitor to your site is lost and needs a helping hand.

The default page that shows is pretty boring. It’s not entirely unhelpful, because it still shows your header and sidebar(s), but it’s not as helpful as it could be.

One excellent use for a 404 page is to direct users to little-trafficked content that you still think is very, very good. Maybe you want more love for that post you wrote about your fluffy bunny (so fluffy!). You can add a link to it on your 404 page.

Now, if Atahualpa was as user-friendly as it usually is, there would be a spot in the theme options to edit the 404 page. But. There isn’t.

Over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend, I offered The Flaming Geeks Book of Geeky Trivia for .99 on an Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal. I didn’t have tiers, so it was 99 cents the whole time until it went back up to the list price of $2.99.

As I did when I offered it as a Free Book Promotion, I only marketed it by sharing it on my personal Facebook page. I did this a couple of times during the promotion.

Share the post “Amazon Prime Air – Drone Delivery? Is This April Fool’s Day?”

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Sure, it works in California. How’s it going to cope with a snowstorm?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t post about Amazon’s latest bizarre announcement. Amazon Prime Air promises to deliver your package to you in 30 minutes via unmanned flying vehicle. This is still a couple of years off and still quite in the testing phase, but it’s been a great boost in publicity for Amazon right at the start of the Christmas shopping season. Are you talking about indie bookstores’ Cider Monday or are you talking about Amazon drones flying books to your door? Thirty minutes is faster than most people can even drive to a bookstore and back — if your town even still has one!

Here’s the video to see it in action:

As dubious as I am about the whole venture, I admit it’s kind of cool to imagine my future self standing outside with a camera, ready to take video of the aerial arrival of one of my books. Take that, […]

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I created this site to help others write, publish, and sell their ebooks. With a background in IT, library science, and writing, it all seems to fit perfectly in my wheelhouse. I share tips, tricks, pitfalls, failures, and successes. Come join me on the journey.